Great Expectations

Great Expectations (1946)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038574/]

The Gist:
An early David Lean film, just one year after Brief Encounter (a film I saw earlier in the project), doing a fairly classic rendition of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (as opposed to Cuaron's more modernist take...which I just found out was by Alfonso Cuaron, kind of crazy). Anyway, the film can feel a little stagnate at times but for the most part I found it very entertaining in its own sort of strict formalist sort of way. What I think helped the film, and perhaps what I think propelled it to greater heights than its imperfect 1998 counterpart, is that it has this gothic vibe that is just very suitable for Dickensian atmosphere. The dark shadows of the graveyard and the cobwebs of the mansion and the dark waters as they make the harrowing escape near the end of the film, it all gives the narrative such life. Now if only the writing didn't feel just a little stale.